


when the day breaks

by kaleidoscopestars



Category: Wanna One (Band)
Genre: M/M, Post-Apocalypse, brief descriptions of blood/violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-18
Updated: 2018-03-18
Packaged: 2019-04-04 08:54:16
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,262
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14016714
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaleidoscopestars/pseuds/kaleidoscopestars
Summary: woojin and jihoon meet at the end of the world





	when the day breaks

**Author's Note:**

> this was mostly written as a way for me to experiment with writing styles but it somehow spiralled into a whole 7.2k story and here we are!

Before all of this, there was a time when Woojin felt something other than the hollow ache in his chest and the pounding behind his temples. 

They meet at the edge of a ruined city as the sky turns red.

Woojin has blood on his shirt that he doesn’t remember the origin of and Jihoon has a pack of demons chewing at his heels and the stars in his eyes. 

When he looks back he can’t remember when it happened. Time isn’t relevant anymore, not when there’s no way to keep track of it. He can remember where. Places are still real and tangible enough to stick around. On a day he doesn’t know, at some time edging closer towards night than morning, they meet at a crossroads surrounded by the corpses of burned out cars and the rotting skulls of those less fortunate than themselves. Hollow husks of empty buildings loom up into the skyline behind them, some choked with vines and others beginning to crumble. Jihoon offers his hand instead of harsh words or the sting of the semi-automatic hanging at his side and Woojin is more than happy to accept it, tired of traveling alone for too long. Later Jihoon will confide that the gun ran out of ammunition somewhere between when he crossed the mountains and the last time he saw the moon, and Woojin will laugh properly for the first time in months.

The time that they travel together blends together in a haze of semi-darkness and muted pain. It’s too dangerous to stop and they have no fixed destination to reach. When Woojin asks Jihoon, where he was heading before their paths crossed he simply says ‘Away.’ and lets the conversation fade into nothingness like a waterfall over a cliff. 

Away works for Woojin. Anything works. The blood on his shirt clings like a memory’s trace to his skin no matter how many times he scrubs at it with acidic rainwater until his skin turns red and Jihoon has to stop him. Sometimes, the few times when he manages to sleep, it comes alive, warm and scarlet, and seeps down his nose into his throat, drowning him. The body- the person- it comes from lies in front of him and no matter how hard he tries he can’t stop them from bleeding out. The rest of his memory is fuzzy and grey, static on a lifeless tv screen in the middle of a storm that doesn’t end.

Jihoon doesn’t ask questions and Woojin returns the favour. He doesn’t ask about the notches carved into the gun next to the trigger, or why Jihoon insists on continuing to carry it when it’s less useful than anything else under the sickly orange sun. 

They walk past the point where their feet turn numb and their legs become lead. To stop is to die out here, Jihoon always says with a grin when complaints begin to bubble out of Woojin’s throat and Woojin turns his eyes to the heavens and curses him for being right. People are worse than the elements, more malicious and unpredictable- some hell-bent on revenge, others on surviving, and others on painting the world red out of sadistic anger. Stopping would make them a target for the countless raiders and people so desperate that their humanity has eroded away.

Roads turn to dust and it gets into their mouths, burning their throats and scraping them raw, no matter how tightly they tie the scarves covering their faces. Sometimes the wind will whip the sand into a frenzy until the air around them turns red and opaque and Woojin wonders if that's what hell is like. Rain is a rarity but when it does come it’s a double-edged sword- the poison that clogs up the atmosphere and chokes the sun also turns the rain to acid until it feels like fire pelting at their skin. Dry earth won’t absorb rain as easily as you would think. They learn this the hard way when the valley that they’re in turns into a raging torrent of mud, waves spinning over each other and devouring everything in their path in a blur of dirt. They seek shelter in a cave, halfway up the side of one of the hills and sit and watch as everything gets torn apart below them. Jihoon leans his head on Woojin’s shoulder and Woojin is too scared to break the silence so he lets the howling of the wind do it for him.

Around the time that Jihoon starts coughing, Woojin changes his shirt but the blood that was on that is now in his blood and he can’t escape it.

Somewhere between the mud-clogged rivers and the loss of any remaining scraps of hope they meet Jaehwan. He’s sitting next to a body, legs crossed completely still. For a second Woojin thinks that he’s one of the countless dead until he laughs, the sound tearing into the sky and threatening to rip it open. Jihoon learns that the body was Jaehwan’s friend from before the world turned against them, and Woojin watches, hanging back.

They bury his body next to an abandoned gas station, the sun sinking over the horizon and throwing Jihoon’s face into a mess of red and black. He looks beautiful, despite the gauntness in his cheeks and the thin line his lips are set into. Woojin sits on the ruined tarmac and fixes his eyes on the fires in the distance, the smoke hanging above them thick and acrid, a black blotch on the horizon. Later he’ll mention it to Jihoon and they’ll change their course to avoid it.

Jaehwan has a knife in his hand that never stops moving and an element in his eyes that sets Woojin’s teeth on edge. Jihoon calls him troubled and Woojin calls him unhinged. He moves before thinking. Threatening the air, the grass, the pothole filled roads. They travel together until Woojin’s fringe begins to fall into his eyes and he has to hack it back to a practical length with scissors found in a shell of a house. In all that time Woojin never sees Jaehwan sleep. Safety lies in numbers but it comes with an uncertain undercurrent. Trust is a fickle thing at the best of times and this is the closest you can get to the very worst. Human nature is even more erratic, dancing and changing, less reliant that a will o’ the wisp and more volatile than pure ethanol. Somewhere in the back of Woojin’s head he knew this but he learns it for sure between the marshes and the interstate when Jaehwan goes off like a poorly timed bomb.

Even when he looks back, hours and days later, he can’t pinpoint how it happens. They’re picking their way through the brittle grass, heading up onto the road. It’s more exposed but it’s a sacrifice they’re willing to make at the time to avoid having to watch their every step for snakes and rabbit holes.

Jihoon says something, throws a stone aimlessly. It ricochets off the door of an abandoned car with a resounding crack before skittering across the asphalt and out of sight. One second Jaehwan is still and silent and the next he’s screeching like a kicked cat his knife at Woojin’s throat, tracing hard lines around his adam's apple. Before he can blink, Jihoon’s hand is grabbing the back of Jaehwan’s shirt and tugging him backwards with strength he’s never shown before. Jaehwan stumbles backwards, foot catching on a dent or crack or large rock (Woojin’s memory is too flawed to remember accurately) and he crumples, head hitting the concrete with a sick crunch. Red blooms outwards like petals falling from a rose bush and Jaehwan’s eyes are suddenly blank and unseeing. Jihoon grabs Woojin’s wrist and they run.

They meet Minhyun and Seongwoo in a wasteland charred black by fire. They’re soldiers of a forgotten war, leaning heavily on each other, with scars seared across their arms and the backs of their eyes. When they meet, Minhyun puts himself between Seongwoo and Jihoon, shielding him from the gun in Jihoon’s hand, as if a frail body of tissue paper skin and matchstick bones could protect him against a barrage of bullets that could puncture lungs and rip apart muscle without stopping. 

The sun turns a sickly yellow above them as they stand in silence. Seongwoo breaks it first, voice deep and raspy as if it hadn’t been used in months. “Nuclear fallout,” he calls it. Woojin rolls the words around in his mouth, it feels good to have a name to put to the events tearing the world apart at the seams. Now that he knows, he can feel the radiation seeping into his skin, sticky and unnatural. It feels like a pack of fire ants squeezing into his muscles and running along the tendons. Jihoon tells him that he’s imagining it but he can tell from the dark moons under his eyes that it’s affecting him as well.

Everyone has lost something, Woojin is the only one fortunate to not remember what he lost. He’s reminded of this when Minhyun freezes at distant gunshots that boom louder than canons in the oppressive silence of the dying world, or when Jihoon thinks that no one is watching him and lets tears flow down his face in silence. Seongwoo wears his dog tags around his neck like a medal, there are others on the thin chain as well, with names he doesn’t own. On the third day they spend together Minhyun tells Woojin that they’re the last of their battalion still standing, the rest lost to a hail of metal and poison gas that stripped the air from their lungs and drowned them on dry land. “The lucky few” is what Minhyun calls himself and Seongwoo, laugh bitterer than bile. They can’t remember what they were fighting for and Seongwoo spits out curses into the empty air like poison from a pit viper, filled with the useless need for revenge. He curses nameless authorities, every god he can think of and some he’s probably made up, himself, Minhyun.

Despite how hard he tries, Woojin can’t remember. His brain is clouded and filled with white noise, his only memories being blood and the tugging feeling of missing someone whose face you can’t recall. 

He has new memories now though. Of Jihoon, standing at the top of a hill laughing. “I could own this world.” He’d said, “No one else has a claim on it now.”; Of Jihoon, his jaw set and tears glistening as they pass by yet another body long past anything they could’ve done to help; Of Jihoon, slipping his hand into Woojins as they walk on drunk with fatigue but unable to stop.

 

Minhyun and Seongwoo were heading east and Jihoon and Woojin were heading nowhere.

There’s a military base to the east, and Seongwoo tells stories of towering walls and generators running with a reliable hum. But to Woojin the stories sound too much like the bastard child of false hope and wishful thinking. He can tell Minhyun feels the same, sees it in the tired slope of his shoulders and the forced smile stitched onto his lips. Even though he doesn’t believe Seongwoo he won’t say it, they’ve come too far buoyed by optimism to let it crumble now.

Time blends together once again and Woojin can never tell whether hours or days have passed. Minhyun grows paler, his cheeks sinking further and further until he begins to resemble a skull. He starts to cough, loud and harsh, the sound making Woojin cringe. Sometimes, when he pulls his hands away from his mouth they come back wet and stained crimson with blood.  
“We were too close when the bombs went off.” Minhyun says one day when he catches Woojin staring at him full of apprehension and fear. The radiation is a part of Minhyun now, destroying him from the inside out and Woojin harbours a sick hope that Minhyun won’t stay with them long enough for him to see how it ends. 

They part ways at a forest. Branches knit together to form an impenetrable canopy over their heads despite being devoid of leaves, and Jihoon hangs back, tugging at Woojin’s coat like a child.  
“This place gives me the creeps.” Is his only explanation. “I don’t want to go into it.”

Minhyun’s too understanding. Smile worn thin from overuse he presses a crumpled piece of paper into Woojin’s hand. On it is an address and a short message, only a couple of lines long.

“If you find him, let him know that we’re alive,” He says “Please.” 

“Godspeed.” Seongwoo adds as an afterthought, mock saluting to Woojin. He turns and grabs Minhyun’s hand and they walk into the forest, the darkness swallowing them whole. Woojin and Jihoon wait and watch until all trace of their friends has disappeared as if they’ve been struck off the face of the earth. 

It’s weird having a direction to travel in, some feeling of purpose. The address leads them to a city, one Jihoon’s never been to and Woojin only remembers in flashes of black and white and a blur of noise. Woojin runs his thumb over the paper until the ink blurs and fades away to a faint imprint but he’s read it so many times that it’s burned into his brain. Even if he forgets everything else he doubts he could forget that. Unlike him, Jihoon isn’t as trusting. He sees every pitfall and dead end hidden in their journey. There’s a reason that they left the city, a reason that they keep traveling and he takes every opportunity to remind Woojin of it but they’re too close to the city to give up on Minhyun’s last request and Woojin refuses to back down.

Daniel lives at the top of an abandoned apartment building and when they tell him that Seongwoo and Minhyun are alive he leans against the wall in relief.

His apartment is a maze of junk- some of it useful, some of it rusted and melted past repair. It’s stacked against the walls and in haphazard piles across the floor. Jihoon calls it garbage and Daniel calls it useful.

“You never know when you might need a-” He pulls a face at the lump of metal in his hand, wires sticking out of it at impossible angles. “A whatever this is.”

Daniel doesn’t mention how he knows Minhyun and Seongwoo, and Woojin files this into his ever growing list of things he doesn’t know but wants to. They seem close though, from the way that Daniel’s face creases into a smile whenever he mentions them. Jihoon asks a few times, blunt and tactless, but soon gives up when Daniel brushes him off each time. 

One room of the apartment is empty of debris. Instead, the walls are covered in whiteboards and paper clippings, all littered with names, ages, descriptions. People missing and people found. Everyone comes through the city eventually and they’re all looking for someone they lost when everything went up in smoke and ash and burning orange. At least that’s what Daniel says and Woojin has no evidence to prove otherwise. When someone comes through the city, Daniel takes note of them or who they’re looking for and adds it to one of the walls. Jihoon asks him why and he simply shrugs and says that it’s the least he can do to help. In a way it’s sort of a memorial- most of the people on there are probably long dead, and the oldest scraps of paper have started to fade and turn yellow.

The second night they stay with Daniel, Woojin finds Jihoon in the room. His hand holding the bottom of one of the scraps. “Park Woojin.” He says. “That’s you.” Woojin takes the paper from him, not knowing what to say. There’s a tiny picture of him stapled to it right underneath his name. In it, he’s wearing a school uniform and smiling widely, his arm around someone who’s just out of frame. Jihoon never meets his eyes.The person looking for him is called Daehwi and however much Woojin wants to know who that is his brain continues to fail him. 

He asks Daniel about it later. They’re sitting at the counter in the kitchen, one of the few places in the apartment that’s borderline tidy and Jihoon is fast asleep on the couch in the next room. Daniel takes the paper out of his hands and studies it, his face creased up in thought. They sit in silence for a few minutes as Daniel thinks and Woojin absentmindedly pets one of Daniel’s many cats that’s climbed up onto the counter next to him.

“It was a while ago,” He finally says “Right after communication from the government cut out and everything properly went to shit. Everyone was leaving, trying to get out of the city because they thought that being somewhere else was safer so by that point the streets were pretty empty. I went to the store to see if there was anything left.” He pauses and hands the note back to Woojin.

“Your friend-Daehwi was there, he asked me if I’d seen you and I told him that it was a big city and even if I had I probably wouldn’t remember. I felt bad though because he looked like he was about to cry so I told him that if I did see you I’d tell you that he was looking for you. There was some other kid with him as well. Jinyoung I think?”

“Why didn’t you tell me when we got here?” He only asks because he has nothing else to say.

“It was a long time ago kid, a lot has happened since then.” If it was anyone else calling him a kid he would’ve protested but Daniel makes it sound like a term of endearment so he nods instead and Daniel reaches over to pat his shoulder in an attempt to be comforting.

“I hope you find him.”

“I hope so as well.” He isn’t sure if he means it.

Jihoon had all but demanded that they leave the city and however much Woojin thought he wanted to stay he could feel the itch to be on the move again deep in his bones so he concedes.

They move on the next day, leaving Daniel and his city behind them. Woojin with a new name burned into his head and Jihoon with a half working radio he pulled from Daniel’s piles of wreckage. 

Jihoon spends the following days tinkering with the radio whenever they stop to rest. He pulls the wires out, checking for damage before shoving them back into place before rinsing and repeating the same actions when the radio stays dead. Occasionally he’s interrupted by coughing fits that make Woojin nervous (he remembers what was happening to Minhyun all too clearly). Jihoon waves away his concern, chalking his cough up to the dust that constantly hangs thick and heavy in the air and going straight back to working on the radio as if he didn’t sound like he was hacking up his lungs only seconds before.

It’s clear that he has no real idea what he’s doing but sometimes he’ll get crackles of static or garbled words through the speakers and it’s enough to keep a fragment of hope alive. Woojin thinks it’s pointless. He says as much and Jihoon sulks in silence for the next few miles, kicking at every rock and pebble in his path. Eventually, Woojin grows tired of the brooding storm cloud trailing behind him and takes the radio out of his hands, twisting a few of the wires until a voice can be heard. Thin and hard to make out but not marred by static and interference.

“How did you do that?” Jihoon asks, eyes wide. 

Woojin just shrugs. “I don’t know.” He says and he doesn’t. It had been muscle memory, no thought behind it.

With utmost care, Jihoon takes the radio out of Woojin’s hands, cradling it like it’s made out of paper thin glass and any sudden movement will cause it to shatter. 

_“Hello? Hello? Is anyone still out there?”_ The voice cuts out and there’s what sounds like a scuffle or maybe someone grabbing for the radio. _“Hello, can anyone hear me?”_

Jihoon crows in victory, fingers already reaching the press the button on the side, but Woojin shakes his head.

“We don’t know who they are or what they want.”

“What’ve we got left to lose?” Jihoon replies, voice scathing, and Woojin wants to say that he has Jihoon left to lose and he’d rather be gutted alive than have that happen, but he seals his lips shut instead.

Taking the silence as an answer, Jihoon picks up the radio again and starts to say something into it. Woojin doesn’t stick around to hear it, walking out of the wreck of the house they’re seeking shelter in and out into the night. He sits on a tree stump a few meters from the door and leans back, staring up at the sky. 

A few stars have managed to fight their way through the clouds that smother the sky and they sit there peacefully winking in and out of existence. He has vague memories of being able to see the whole of the night sky. A blanket of stars- more than anyone could ever count in their lifetime- spreading out past infinity. All muddled together in a mess of constellations that he could never find however hard he tried. The glow of the moon has been stained the same putrid yellow as the sun and it reminds Woojin of a fading bruise on pale skin.

Looking up everything seems normal. Looking up it’s possible to ignore the chaos the world around him has turned into as it burns in on itself. For the first time in longer than he can remember he feels at peace. The fear that normally claws at his throat threatening to choke him has faded into white noise that he can brush aside like spiders webs, so he does just that. 

He isn’t sure how long he sits out there before Jihoon joins him. It could've been hours or minutes, probably longer judging by how the chill of the night air has started to turn his fingers to ice. Jihoon sits down next to him gently pushing Woojin sideways so that he has enough space to sit comfortably and Woojin rests his head on his shoulder. They sit like that for a while longer, letting the silence envelop them like a blanket.

Jihoon breaks the silence first. “I’m sticking with you until the end.” He says as he winds his fingers together with Woojins. His hands are rough, covered with half healed grazes and still slightly chapped from the last remnants of the winter wind.There’s a callous on Jihoon’s palm from lugging around that godforsaken gun and Woojin runs his thumb across it absentmindedly. He looks down and notes to himself that Jihoon’s hands are all rounded edges and smooth lines compared to his own odd angular knuckles and bony fingers that jut out at odd angles. In the time it takes him to think of an answer he squeezes Jihoon’s hand like he’s afraid Jihoon will disappear into a cloud of dust.

“I’m sticking with you forever.”

Summer rolls in off the back of spring, banishing the spells of heavy showers and bringing with it a choking dry heat that makes every breath feel like running a marathon and makes their skin feel like it’s burning even when they’re out of the sun. They take to seeking shelter and futilely trying to grab a few hours of sleep during the day when the sun is at its peak and traveling at night when the sun has dipped down past the horizon and the temperatures freefall along with it. When they’re forced to travel in the day they cover every inch of their skin with scarves and any other fabric they can find in abandoned houses, but even that doesn’t stop the sun from blistering their skin and turning it ugly, red and raw.

In the heat of summer, Jihoon takes a turn for the worse. The cough that’s been bugging him since the crossroads where they met (and maybe before there’s no way for Woojin to know) turns from a nuisance to something that shakes his shoulders and forces him to lean forward, gasping helplessly for air. Still, he waves it off and blames it on dust and pollen (despite there being no living plant life in sight, only dead grass, and shells of burned out trees). “Allergies.” He’ll say with a pained smile, forcing positivity into his voice. It nags at Woojin, he can’t stop thinking about what happened to Minhyun and part of him knows that it’s happening to Jihoon too. The other part of him refuses to accept it and so they continue on like before.

“Before I die.” Jihoon says one night as they pick their way across the wasteland “I want to see the sea.” 

It hits Woojin in the chest and knocks the air out of him as if the words were a rock Jihoon had thrown. Death was something he knew was chasing them- Jihoon especially. But hearing Jihoon address it directly reminds him how little time they probably have left before it sinks its claws into them for good.

“Why?” He manages to choke out.

The boy on the crappy radio that Jihoon still clung to had told him about it, back in spring before he stopped replying to Jihoon for reasons that Woojin refuses to consider. His name had been Guanlin and he’d sounded like little more than a child. Jihoon had listened in wonder as he’d told stories of the coast where he was, and how the sea still stretched further than the eye could see, still glittering blue and serene. In return, Jihoon had told Guanlin of ruined cities and the jagged remains of skyscrapers, of Minhyun and Seongwoo and Daniel. It had been nice to hear a voice that wasn’t theirs, comforting almost. The way he’d talked about going back to his hometown as if it was still intact had spun hope into a net that Woojin and Jihoon had fallen into and it’d carried them along for days until the messages stopped and the illusion vanished.

Woojin agrees because the sea and its endless blue would make a more than welcome change to the days of brown and grey and mottled red (and because, he’s come to realise recently, that he’d do anything to make Jihoon happy.). Jihoon shouts in wordless joy and presses a kiss to Woojin’s cheek before dashing off faster than he has in months. For the rest of the day, Wooji can’t wipe the grin off his face.

They follow faded road signs that Jihoon swears on his mother’s life lead towards the coast. (When he realises what he said he winces visibly and Woojin wants to comfort him but doesn’t know how.)

What’s left of the landscape starts to change, hills and valleys morphing into wide open plains with dried up riverbeds cutting uneven zig zags across it. It’s more familiar to Woojin and something in his gut whispers that he’s been here before, or at least somewhere impossibly similar. He chooses to ignore it like he chooses to ignore everything these days. Thinking too hard will get you killed or at least make you wish you’d died when everyone else had.

When the empty fields fade into torn down houses and the wreck of a town, the tugging feeling in his gut turns into something all consuming and no matter how hard he tries, Woojin can’t shove it to one side and it takes over his brain like a tsunami crashing down and wiping away any logical thoughts. His legs are running without him telling them to and not even Jihoon’s desperate yelling behind him can make him stop as he tears through the streets. His body is pulling him towards something and the rushing noise in his ears and the black spots dancing across his vision make him feel like he’s about to pass out but he still can’t stop. 

The feeling of familiarity grows the further into the town he runs. His memories are still muddy like a river after a storm, but the more streets he dashes past, the more the mud and silt are carried away downstream and the clearer it all becomes. He can remember flashes of faces half obscured by darkness, silhouettes against angry flames, hushed voices hissing in argument, and in all of it fear. He remembers fire raining from the sky and someone else’s hand clasped tightly in his. Streets full of panicked people all shoving past each other, all trying to escape.

Woojin reaches the charred remains of a house at the end of a road and his memories clear.

It hits him like a freight train and he stumbles, disorientated, and falls to his knees in the middle of the road. The world spins around him and threatens to make him sick as he struggles for breath. All this time hoping that he’d be able to remember what before and now that he does he wishes he could rip it from his head.

He barely registers Jihoon kneeling down next to him and they stay there in silence for a while before Woojin finally speaks.

“I remember,” The words sound shaky but by some miracle, his voice doesn’t break “I used to live here, in that house.” He nods his head towards the house that isn’t a house anymore, just a mess of burnt wood and concrete. Jihoon says nothing so he continues.

“When the bombs dropped, or whatever it was, my parents were at work. They never made it back. It was just me and Daehwi, Youngmin, and Donghyun. They were my friends.”

He coughs a couple of times, fighting back tears. He won’t cry, he refuses to cry. “It was okay for a while, we got by. Until the riots started. People were angry at the government and they didn’t care who they took it out on. Youngmin got caught up in one of the early ones and he- he didn’t survive it. After that Donghyun said we had to leave, but when we tried the town was already in uproar and we got separated from Daehwi.”

Jihoon slips his hand into Woojin’s and squeezes it gently. “You don’t have to tell me this if you don’t want to.”

Woojin grips Jihoon’s hand back as if he’s afraid Jihoon will turn into dust and disappear on the breeze. “Donghyun tried to get back into the city to find Daehwi, he left me by the side of the road and told me to not come after him whatever happened. I was stupid and I didn’t listen and I followed him. There was someone walking towards him and they- they had a knife.”

He can feel his throat closing up as grief tightens around his neck like a noose. “I don’t know if they thought he had food, or medicine, or something else worth threatening him for because all he had was the ratty backpack he’d shoved some clothes into before we left. I called out, to try to warn him and he turned to shout at me to go back and when he was distracted-” He lets out a ragged breath. “It all happened so fast.”

Jihoon pulls him into a hug. His chin resting on top of Woojin’s head, arms wrapped around him so tight that Woojin can almost feel his ribs cracking.

Woojin keeps speaking because if he doesn’t finish saying it now then he never will. “I couldn’t stop the bleeding, no matter how hard I tried. He died because of me.”

“It wasn’t your fault, none of it was your fault,” Jihoon says it with so much conviction that Woojin can almost believe him. But Donghyun’s blood is still on his hands all these months later and no matter how hard he tries he can’t get rid of it.

"At least you know now that Daehwi made it out." Jihoon mumbles. 

One of his friends made it out. One less death on his hands and on his conscience. Daehwi has always been resourceful. If anyone could make it in this burnt out shell of a world, it was him.

He isn’t sure how long they sit there on the road, Jihoon holding Woojin close while the buildings watch over them like silent witnesses. When they finally get up the sky is tinged with pink and Woojin’s knees scream in protest.

They leave the city hands still clasped together and Woojin has never been happier to leave anywhere behind. The sun dips down below the horizon, leaving the world a puzzle of black and grey shadows and they don’t stop walking. Not until the city disappears from view and Woojin collapses from exhaustion, making Jihoon put his foot down and demand that they rest- at least until it’s light again.

After that day they continue on as normal. Woojin pretends to not notice that Jihoon is walking slower and slower. Each day struggling a bit more to keep up with the steady pace that Woojin sets. He pretends not to notice how each one of Jihoon’s breathes is more of a wheeze and how his cough has turned ugly and wet, more in his chest than his throat like it had been before. He looks gaunt, skin stretched over bones, little more than a walking skeleton and Woojin wants to at least mention that but he refrains. In return, Jihoon pretends not to notice how Woojin has grown more withdrawn, prone to closing up entirely when he sees something, anything, that brings more memories back in a painful landslide. 

“I wonder,” Jihoon says one day “If we’d met before all of this, do you think we’d still be friends?” The sun is shining blindingly behind him turning his windswept hair into a halo. In that moment Woojin decides that if angels do exist then they must look exactly like Jihoon does right now.

“I think we would be.” The smile that Jihoon gives him is brighter than the sun. “Somewhere out there is a universe where the world is okay and we’re still friends.” The thought of it makes his chest ache in a way he can’t quite pinpoint.

 

In the end, it all happens faster than he thought it would. Faster than he could’ve ever imagined. Somewhere between the end of the road, they’d been following and the salt marshes, Jihoon collapses and he won’t wake up no matter how hard Woojin shakes him, or how loudly he says his name. He’s still breathing, just, so Woojin sits by him and waits. Cursing at the sky because why did Jihoon’s body have to give up on him here. So close to the sea that Woojin can taste the salt in the breeze.

“Hey.” Jihoon’s voice is weak and raspy and it makes Woojin want to cry because he’s okay, he’s still alive.

“Hey,” Woojin replies “You scared the life out of me.”

“I’m dying, Woojin. I’m not going to make it to the sea.” Jihoon is blunt as he always is and suddenly Woojin’s months of denial and pretense have been for absolutely nothing.

“No, you will, we’re almost there it’s only a few more miles I swear we ca-” He sounds desperate, even to his own ears. 

“I lied to you before.” Jihoon interrupts him and immediately Woojin slams his mouth closed. “When I said that my gun ran out of bullets I lied. There was always one left, I was saving it y’know, for the end. I knew I was sick even back when we first met and I knew I wasn’t going to get better because I’d seen it tear apart my family, my friends too, everyone that I used to know before.” His words come out in a rush as if the dam that held them trapped inside his head had finally broken

Woojin shakes his head, not wanting to listen “No there’s still time left we can make it.” He isn’t sure why the sea’s so important to him now. It had always been Jihoon’s dream.

“Woojin, please.” Jihoon pulls himself up so that he’s sitting next to Woojin and the action alone is enough to send him spiraling into a coughing fit until he’s gasping for breath. When he pulls his hands away from his mouth they’re stained crimson. Woojin is reminded of Minhyun and he screws his eyes shut like a child because if he can’t see it then it’s not happening.

“Woojin,” Jihoon tries again “Don’t let this kill me as well. It only gets more painful and I don’t want that to happen or for you to have to see it.”

“Two questions,” Woojin says, keeping his eyes closed because if he sees Jihoon’s face he’ll lose what little hold he has on his emotions. “Just answer two questions.”

“Anything.”

“The marks on your gun, next to the trigger, what do they mean?”

“They all stand for someone close to me who I couldn’t save,” Jihoon says simply. “My worst nightmare was having to add you to it.”

Woojin nods, not wanting to push him further. He knows from experience that if Jihoon wanted to say more he would’ve. “When we first met, why didn’t you try to kill me or fight me. I could’ve done anything to you but you took the risk anyway.”

Jihoon laughs, quiet but genuine “You were cute, I was dying, it’s the end of the world and I didn’t have anything to lose.” 

They’re silent for a moment, unsaid words winding around them like a spider’s web. Woojin feels as if someone has stuck a red-hot knife into the center of his chest and is twisting it slowly, ripping apart his heart and lungs and the tissue around them. Every time he opens his mouth to try to speak there’s nothing there for him to say.

“So I guess this is goodbye” Jihoon finally says. He leans forward and presses a chaste kiss to Woojin's lips. It tastes of metal and tears, but Woojin doesn’t mind. He cups Jihoon’s face in his hands and gently wipes away some of the tears falling from his eyes.

“I guess so.” It’s little more than a whisper.

“Goodbye, Park Woojin, take care of yourself.” Jihoon’s words are mangled by sobs.

“Goodbye, Jihoon.” _I love you,_ he adds in his head and hopes somehow Jihoon can hear it. In another universe, he’s brave enough to say it out loud, but in this one, his voice fails him. He kisses Jihoon quickly on the forehead and gets up, moving in a trance. “I’ll miss you.”

Every nerve in his body is screaming at him to turn around and it takes everything he has left to stop himself from turning around and running back to Jihoon. Instead, he focuses his attention on walking forwards, putting one foot in front of the other and shoving his emotions deep into the corner of his mind.

He doesn’t even turn around when he hears the gunshot rip through the air, jarringly loud and so close he feels as if his head might explode.

He feels dizzy, his vision cycling from red to black to white and back to red. In the midst of it he catches glimpses of Daehwi and Donghyun and Youngmin and now Jihoon is there as well, imprinted on his memory. Yet another person he lost because he was too weak, too stupid.

And just like that, Woojin is back to being alone.

The next few days are even blurrier than the weeks before. Time is an abstract concept and Woojin isn’t sure when it starts and ends. All he’s aware of is the ache radiating outwards from his chest and turning his insides into molten lava. As the days pass the lava solidifies into something heavy that sits in the bottom of his stomach, weighing him down.

The air grows steadily colder the closer he gets to the coast, the wind rolls off the sea carrying with it a feeling of something unknown. He shivers and tucks his hands inside his jacket, wrapping his arms around himself. Trees around him grow shorter, turning into shrubs. The soil beneath his feet turns from ochre red to pale, sun-bleached yellow. Coarse sand begins to fill his shoes, sneaking in through holes in the fabric that’s been worn thin from more walking than he would’ve ever dreamed of in his past life. Seagulls caws drown out the sound of the sea, loud and discordant like a funeral chorus and although Woojin can’t see the ocean yet he knows that it’s within arms reach, just beyond his fingertips.

Suddenly, the ground drops away in front of him as he reaches the cliff’s edge and he stumbles to a stop, throwing his weight backwards to avoid slipping over the edge and into oblivion. A pebble bounces down the cliff face, bouncing off the rocks and Woojin follows it with his eyes. It breaks the surface of the water with a quiet splash, white bubbles rising up before the flow of the water sweeps them away.

Waves break against the rocks at the bottom of the cliff, crashing together in a flurry of white foam. The sound is steady and repetitive and it reminds Woojin of the sound of his heartbeat echoing in his ears. He tears his eyes away from the spot where the pebble fell and looks out towards the horizon.

The point where the sky meets the land is almost indistinguishable. Grey meets grey in a hazy blur and Woojin’s head spins as he tries to separate the two. White wave crests creep out of the choppy water before tumbling over themselves and disappearing back into the current as another wave rises to take its place. Woojin watches, mesmerised, he wonders aimlessly if there’s a force pulling him in the same way that the moon pulls the tides. Something that’s been leading him to this place.

“We made it.” His voice is little more than a whisper “We made it, Jihoon.”

For the first time since all of this began, Woojin lets himself cry. Tears streak down his face cutting streaks through the layers of dust and dirt that sit heavy on his skin. He makes no move to wipe them away.

Rain begins to fall from the sky as he stands there. A silent silhouette against the evening sky. It’s light, the sort of misty drizzle that you barely notice, but still manages to soak you to the skin within minutes. It’s fitting, he thinks, that the sky is crying. Mourning the same loss as him. 

The downpour grows stronger and each raindrop pelts against his skin like a bullet, but he stays there, unmoving. It’s just a passing shower. This is all just passing. All of it. He’s grateful that Jihoon isn’t here to see him like this.

Slowly, he sinks to the ground, legs dangling free over the edge of the cliff.

The sky turns red one last time as Woojin watches.

**Author's Note:**

> please leave feedback!! (even if you thought it sucked please just tell me) if you have any questions you want answers to my cc is [here](https://curiouscat.me/IoveIines)


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